Weekly Art Blog 12/1-12/7/2024

I have been working on my short all week, and I am nearly done! I was right that a week was ambitious, but I have three pages fully done and the fourth is ready for colors. I can finish that up today, and then I just have to push them all through Glaze. I’m very happy with how this turned out. I did some fun framing things that I like practicing with. The page itself was interesting to work on, because I purposefully formatted it to fit a phone screen better, which I estimated at about a 1:2 width to length ratio. It’s crazy how much longer and/or skinnier it looks, and I had to rework some of my plans around the dimensions. I’ll post a character design photo.

I kept thinking about a particular class of memes this week. There are two versions of the genre I’m thinking of. The first is when people portray themselves as a director or producer of a movie and depict the designer or actor or whoever as going against the grain. It’s always very ignorant and silly in so many ways that it kinda makes me mad at how little people understand how art works. So like, there’s the ones where the director of an animated or illustrated thing asks for a “simple and safe” design, and the artist turns in a hot woman character (I’ve never seen it be about a man, maybe they’re out there). And like…what’s “simple and safe”? Who in the history of the development of a cartoon or comic or whatever has asked for “simple and safe”? What world do you live in? The first word there is just ignorance about art. Non-artists probably don’t realize that the “simple” cartoony look is actually very hard to do right and takes all the same skills in anatomy, foreshortening, perspective, etc. that more “complex” styles use. “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” all that jazz. Also, I’m not sure what design elements are supposed to be simple. A character can be literally anyone; there’s no simple choice in designing a person.

And “safe”? That’s just puritanical self-incrimination. You think that sex is somehow dangerous and risky, and that you can only include it in specific characters, or maybe only in pornographic content. You were raised in a repressive, sex-negative society that told you it was dirty and bad and wrong, and think Mrs. Incredible having a big butt is some kind of afront to the world. “Oh no, children might discover that some people are attractive! Burn the evidence! Why would anyone allow that design through, a question I’m only asking because I’m happy it did but I’m simultaneously guilty about having a horny thought in a movie primarily aimed at kids?” Like, grow up, you prude. Also, for someone who so doesn’t like sexualized women in media, you spend a lot of time assuming that specifically women’s bodies are inherently sexual. Like, there is a worthwhile discussion of the ethics of character design and sexuality, but that’s not what we’re having here, is it?

In a variation on that template, I saw a meme the other day about Michael Caine going rogue in the Muppets Christmas Carol by being really serious. How do you think comedy works? Just because it’s a comedy with the Muppets doesn’t mean it somehow deserves lesser effort or whatever. More to the point, comedic scenes are often funny because one or more of the people in it are serious when another person is goofy. It’s basic contrast. Always add salt to your cake batter. You want someone to remind you that the silly, absurd thing is silly and absurd. I’m sure the director of that movie came to Michael Caine to have a discussion about how serious they wanted to play it. I mean, he was Ebenezer Scrooge, the famous killjoy and bastard; explain to me how you expect someone to play that character light and fun and still be good. I get so angry at how little media literacy people have, and how much we’ve failed as a society in teaching critical thinking skills. It’s especially annoying when people without those skills very confidently exclaim wisdom to the universe that betrays the exact opposite.

The other version of this genre of meme is where people do a little scene describing all the crazy, unusual elements in a story and then are surprised that such a story actually exists, with some statement or implication that no one would make it. The TikTok I saw this week was about Dandadan, which is admittedly a wild manga. It’s very easy to point out how crazy it is for someone unfamiliar and have fun watching their reaction. I get that that’s the point of the meme, sort of. It’s also a jab at the series and fans of it, like, “How can this exist? How can anyone like it?” And like…what’s your point, ultimately? Yes, that’s what the book is. Those superficial elements are (likely) a merging of desired aesthetics and deeper themes, rather than a grab bag of random stuff the author wanted to make a story from, but yeah, they’re all in it. Creatives are famously “weird” people, so I’m not sure why you’re surprised a creative person made a weird story, or think no one would approve of it or read it. Like, you can describe everything that way if you want. Everything about our lives is an arbitrary choice that we often didn’t even make ourselves, and it’s all pretty ridiculous. The framing of the meme, whether or not the people using it mean to, is kind of just bullying, you know? It’s privileging a normie outsider perspective and their right to dictate values against a subculture they don’t fully understand or appreciate.

Also, side note: the video I saw described it as an anime thing. As a comics fan and artist, I have to ask, at every opportunity, for people to stop failing to notice comics until they’re adapted into a show or movie or video game. I’m tired of memes where people post pages of manga and wish they could see it animated. Comics are their own great medium; they’re not the source material for other media, or a pitch for a real story to be made later.

I’m not (only) a stick in the mud here. I do get that the point of the Mrs. Incredible type memes is to show affection for the hot character you’re glad exists, while simultaneously expressing your surprise in where you encountered the character. I get that the Michael Caine type meme exists to celebrate how good his role is, despite other expectations. I acknowledged the fun of the Dandadan type meme. The thing I don’t like about them is always the “buts” involved. “I like this hot character, but they’re in a kid’s movie.” “I like this performance, but it’s in a comedy.” “I like the zaniness of this series, but it sounds weird to other people.” In every case, there’s some underlying negativity that I don’t like. It’s sex-negative, it’s comfortably and confidently lacking in media literacy, it’s reifying normative values at the expense of outsiders. And they don’t work to against the negatives, either; they push them and stand alongside them by accepting them as the norm, if not earnestly coming from that perspective. There’s never any larger discussion or analysis emerging from the meme soup, either. It’s just really disappointing and annoying to me.